For RaiNao, telling stories through the lens of her experience as a queer woman has never come across as a conscious decision. It’s simply who she is.
The Puerto Rican artist, born Naomi Ramírez Rivera, knows the music industry hasn’t always made space for LGBTQ+ artists to tell their lives freely. But she believes that it is slowly changing.
“As the industry has evolved, it’s almost like there’s been an attempt, or a kind of false fear has been created, around telling those stories and being free to tell them as explicitly as we actually lived them,” says RaiNao. “And I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Things have changed, although there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
“It comes very naturally to me, you know? Telling my queer stories as a queer person; It’s not something I’m going to stay quiet about.”
Alongside fellow Puerto Rican artists including Young Miko, Kany García, Villano Antillano and Ricky Martin, RaiNao is helping broaden queer representation in Latin music. She hopes that by sharing her own experiences, she’ll make it easier for the next generation of artists to do the same.
